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Faire de son mieux

by Gilbert Garcin

Photographs: Gilbert Garcin

Publisher: Filigrane Èditions

72 pages

Pictures: 64

Year: November 2013

ISBN: 978-2-35046-289-9

Price: 33 €

Comments: Hardcover, 24 cm x 33 cm

„Everything began in the summer of 1995, when Gilbert Garcin, recently retired but quite simply wanting a second life, decided to launch into photography and, in order to so, participated in classes at the Rencontres d’Arles. Here he practised photomontage, which would be his first source of inspiration. From that time on, using himself as a stand-in, he imagined a universal character whose initial outfit could have been borrowed from Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot. The Gilbert Garcin character grew into an ambiguous embodiment of himself, through which he acted out staged, deceptively ludicrous situations, which he described as ‘small philosophies’, in the style of the great Alfred Hitchcock.
His work casts its spell because Gilbert Garcin shows us obvious things that concern us all: life passing by, the fleeting nature of time, the tenacity required to continue. Hence, he recalls in images, along with the help of evocative titles, that it is preferable to ‘do one’s best’ and to ‘know one’s limits’, because, deep down, all we’re doing is ‘replaying old familiar tunes’, those of Sisyphus and Atlas.“

- Christine Ollier, director of Les filles du calvaire gallery

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